Restaurant shoot: fast & on manual

We had a last minute restaurant shoot today during their lunchtime service. Our challenge today was to shoot fast, fast, fast and get those money shots within a short period of time. Money shots are what pay the bills. If we go to process and don’t have the best images to deliver, it’s not fun having to confront the client.

So our choice was to shoot on the pre-set modes or to shoot on manual. Shooting on manual and running into different, dynamic lighting situations can be suicidal, unless you’re quick and with your manual knowledge.

We wanted the colors on the food to pop! for the client, so we chose to shoot it on manual and had to make sure to get our lighting and colors spot on.

These are what we ended up with, almost straight off the camera, with very little editing, only contrast.

Now go practice on manual when you have the time so that when those money shots are called on, you can deliver. Practice by making changes to one exposure variable at a time: shutter speed or aperture. See how the image changes by changing that one variable.

And no, these were not shot with a full frame camera. (for those of you who always ask! ) 😀